[H] 6970 vs 570 vs 580

[n0x1ous]

There's a thing called "research & development".:thumbsup:

right so i guess Nvidia didnt have any expenses for R & D since they made a profit. you stated that AMD had been making a profit.. has nothing to do with their expenses. you stated they are profitable but their financial results say otherwise regardless of the reason for it

I thought the goal of businesses was to make more money then they use on their expenses but i could be wrong

 

[Red Hawk]

right so i guess Nvidia didnt have any expenses for R & D since they made a profit. you stated that AMD had been making a profit.. has nothing to do with their expenses. you stated they are profitable but their financial results say otherwise regardless of the reason for it

I thought the goal of businesses was to make more money then they use on their expenses but i could be wrong

No, the implication is that AMD did a lot of research and development for their APUs, and still are doing R&D on their next generation of graphics chips, which will be a whole architectural overhaul. Now that the APUs are out they can start profiting on them, and once their next gen of graphics chips are out they'll profit on those. Nvidia did their big Fermi R&D a year or so ago so they are just raking in profits now.

 

[Heinrich]

FYI, 6970s are going out of stock. Not sure if this is temporary or what; if you want want grab one quickly.

 

[Grooveriding]

FYI, 6970s are going out of stock. Not sure if this is temporary or what; if you want want grab one quickly.

I'm seeing this as well, impossible to know if it's the bitcoin craze or they are replacing the card soon.

There is obviously no reason they can't produce the cards if they want to. But if a new release is coming this soon, I can't see that there have not been any leaks or smuggled pictures out of the factories on some of the Asian enthusiast websites.

Next month will make it two years since the last major GPU performance leap was released with the 5870, so we are due. Fingers crossed.

 

[AnandThenMan]

right so i guess Nvidia didnt have any expenses for R & D since they made a profit. you stated that AMD had been making a profit.. has nothing to do with their expenses. you stated they are profitable but their financial results say otherwise regardless of the reason for it

I thought the goal of businesses was to make more money then they use on their expenses but i could be wrong

THINK about who AMD is competing with, and you'll quickly realize why AMD almost never shows a profit. They simply do not move the volume needed to pay for the R&D plus make a handsome profit.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Also the 6970 has horrible overclock scaling. Seems like its IPC drops a lot over its stock 880mhz frequency, except in BC2. Anyone know why that could be?

Powertune?

Memory bandwidth?

Memory error detection?

Performance should scale; BC2 results show they can.

 

[RussianSensation]

THINK about who AMD is competing with, and you'll quickly realize why AMD almost never shows a profit. They simply do not move the volume needed to pay for the R&D plus make a handsome profit.

"Earnings or cash flow methods are appropriate where the business being valued is earning a fair return on its capital employed and the hypothetical purchaser wishes to acquire the future indicated earnings [EBITDA] or cash flows [EBIT] generated by the enterprise. The earnings value of a going concern is based on the yield to an investor, at the desired rate of return on his or her investment, having regard to a number of factors."

In other words, the value of a business (which is not a real estate or say an investment holding company) is the Present Value of all future Cash Flows / Earnings before interest and other non-cash expenses, discounted by a rate of return commensurate with the level / amount of risk required to generate such cash flows / earnings.

Net Income or Net Profits is hardly a relevant metric in finance since it's subject to / affected by:

1) Non-cash expense adjustments such as depreciation/amortization which are an accounting basis and more often than not are not equal to the company's actual tax basis (i.e., there is difference between the amount of depreciation the firm can claim for Tax purposes and what it can claim for accounting purposes on the financial statement);

2) Interest expenses (which vary depending on the capital structure, firm's access to cheap debt, etc.), and for which you account through the discount rate (WACC anyway);

3) Accrual accounting intricacies such as latent tax liabilities, capital loss carryovers, etc..

4) One time non-recurring items (such as NV's charges for bump-gate that are not counted / adjusted for in a financial model
when valuing a business)

In fact, when valuing a business, you may use the Net Income as the starting line in a bottom up valuation approach, but by itself its value is completely meaningless. It's really shocking that Wallstreet headlines continue to highlight net income and NOT cash flows / earnings of a firm.....In fact, in business school one of the first things you are taught is that Net Income is generally used by "unsophisticated" investors.

What I am saying is, a firm can have 5-10 years of negative income, but when adjusted for all these items still have positive cash flows

 

[nitromullet]

I'd have to say the GTX 580 and GTX 590 are kind of an oddball. The gap between the Radeon HD 6970 and the GTX 580 closes a bit in most games at 2560x1600 and 4xAA/16xAF due to the 6970s extra 512MB VRAM and there's a price disparity of $100 or so. The Radeon HD 6990 is either the same speed or a bit faster overall than the GTX 590 at 1920x1200 and then the gap quickly grows at 2560x1600. The GTX 580 is overkill for 1920x1080/1200 and yet not enough for 2560x1440/1600.

This brings me to my point: why would you go for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1440 or higher when you'll lose some performance due to them having insufficient VRAM? Two Radeon HD 6950 2GBs seem like the best bang-for-buck for 2560x1440/1600 if you're over-clocking. If you're playing at 5760x1080/1200 you should get either three Radeon HD 6950s or unlock one Radeon HD 6950 and get one Radeon HD 6990.

That's a fair question. In my case is was simply a matter of availability and price. I was coming off of dual GTX 470s, I sold one, and could step up the other one via EVGA's step-up. I got my first GTX 580 before the Cayman Radeons launched, and with the setup it didn't cost me very much to get the second.

As far as a GTX 580 not being enough for 2560x1440, I disagree. I actually sold my second one unopened because I wasn't really having issues playing games at 2560x1440.

Had I started from the ground up, I think 6950 Crossfire would have been the way to go. No question about it, it's the best bang for the buck high end setup IMO.